Abstract

While mediating, translating, and amplifying the visualized environment, graphic designers must integrate various communicative elements including their particular creative vision. The heightened degree of engagement with content, often referred to as self-authored design, empowers the graphic designer to become a critical collaborator in the communication process, moving beyond mere form-making. This paper will introduce the concepts of self-authorship in graphic design education as part of an integrative pedagogy. Examples of classroom strategies that emphasize interdisciplinary partnerships will be shown and discussed, using the current transformations in our visual and verbal environment as a common framework.

contents

Introduction

Graphic Design Education, Past and Present

The Notion of Self-authorship in Graphic Design

Self-Authored Graphic Design and Students’ Learning Styles

Theories of Integrated Curricula and their Relationship to Graphic Design

Technological Influences

Recommendations for Integration

Conclusion

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Introduction top

Graphic design is, by its nature, an integrative discipline. Problems and opportunities involving the human condition serve as communications challenges to designers, positioning the discipline of graphic design as the interface between problems and solutions, needs and markets, messages and audiences. Designers mediate, translate and amplify the visualized environment, giving tangible form to the objects and experiences that inform, persuade and entertain us.

Throughout the design process, graphic designers must integrate various communicative elements: the content of the message with the expectations of the sender (usually within the context of a governing economic relationship), the perceptions of the audience, the subjective and objective qualities of written and pictorial language, the dissemination technologies of the media, and the designer’s own particular vision (McCoy, 1990) . It is with a high degree of engagement with this latter quality, often referred to as self-authored design, that empowers the graphic designer to be more involved with the generation of message content, and not merely its visual form.

Within academia, graphic design, and self-authored graphic design in particular, occupies a unique position at the cross-roads of various disciplines, offering many possibilities for integrative studies. Because graphic design is involved with the contextual structure of information, it facilitates a dialog between diverse disciplines and their specific codes of representation.

The purpose of our paper is to introduce the concepts of self-authorship in graphic design education as part of an integrative pedagogy. The enhanced potential of harnessing graphic design’s dual modalities – the integrative processes inherent in design thinking and doing, and the ability of graphic design to engage other disciplines by giving form to diverse subjects – make this topic especially relevant to educators interested in integrative studies. We intend to provide a brief overview of graphic design’s current position in higher education, establish a context for its role in an integrated studies curriculum, and make recommendations for interdisciplinary learning activities involving self-authored graphic design. It is our goal to promote further discussion of how to develop collaborative strategies with other disciplines, using the current transformations in our visual and verbal environment as a common framework.

Graphic Design Education, Past and Present top

Typically, graphic design programs at the university level reside in departments of art; if program size dictates, or if there are allied design programs like product, apparel, and interior design, they might be organized within a separate department. Conventionally, the relationship to studio art emphasizes the pictorial qualities of graphic design, the imaging tools shared between the two disciplines, and the prevailing studio-oriented approach to learning, although their divergent methodologies, audiences, histories and intentions have often made for an occasionally strained polemic. One of the main points of tension between the design and fine art disciplines was the earlier assumption that while artists had full control over the content of their work, designers were primarily neutral mediators between client and audience, therefore using visual principles and techniques in a detached, reactionary manner. Because of graphic design’s relatively new status as a profession –largely a twentieth century phenomenon – its body of criticism, analysis and historical research has only begun to mature in the last decade to the point of earning its own independent academic discourse. This discourse not only acknowledges the unique qualities of the medium – in contrast to the other visual arts, graphic design entails the confluence of pictorial and verbal languages through mass communication channels – but also critically examines the social and cultural role of the designer in reinforcing or legitimating power structures. This has had many design educators refocusing their pedagogy towards a more critical involvement with the production of content and an acknowledgment of the many contexts in which our visual culture is shaped.

Graphic design curricula vary from one institution to another, but bachelor’s degree programs in general have some common characteristics. Most program’s foundation studies, where concepts of design principles and elements are introduced, have direct lineage to the famous German art and design academy, the Bauhaus, active between 1919 and 1933. Uniting the arts and crafts, developing an objective and geometric visual vocabulary, and encouraging formal experimentation were some of the key tenets of the Bauhaus. From the 1950s to 1980s, the Basel School of Design in Switzerland wielded enormous impact on American graphic design education through its codified adherence to a rational, systematic approach to design, its belief in clarity of visual communication, and its reductivist form language. Several key American design educators studied in Basel, and furthered the Swiss Modernist philosophies through their own programs.

Building on coursework in design methods, tools, techniques and processes, upper level courses are usually pre-professional with an emphasis on applied, commercially applicable projects, problem-solving, and a synthesis of the skills students have gained during the middle phase of their education. Courses tend to specialize into professional categories: Packaging, Publication Design, Corporate Identity, and Interactive Multimedia. Often, related coursework is encouraged or required to emphasize the pragmatic aspect of the profession, such as Business and Marketing. Internships often supplement the classroom learning experience, and give the students practical knowledge from an applied professional environment. Professional project execution and a marketable portfolio are highly regarded at this level of the student’s education.

Courses at all levels are typically structured as studios, with plenty of hands-on activity, embracing the “learning by doing” approach. More progressive programs include courses on design theory, history and criticism, engaging the students to read, write and incorporate content from their liberal studies into their design work. Student initiation of design content, problem-seeking, personal expression, identification of niche audiences and alternative cultures – all contribute to the role of self-authorship in graphic design education in amplifying the field’s conceptual framework, while putting the strictly market-driven concerns of traditional senior portfolios into a broader perspective.

As part of this broader strategy of problem-seeking and investigation within graphic design education, the practices of self-initiation and self-authorship traditionally employed at the graduate level are being increasingly incorporated into the undergraduate graphic design curriculum. From this heightened involvement with content, an equally heightened interdisciplinary perspective within the classroom becomes crucial. Design methodology, computer technology, semiotics, semantics, critical theory, design history and contemporary criticism combine with aesthetics and craft to enable design students to serve as pivotal participants in interdisciplinary thinking.

At the graduate level, generally leading to the two to three year-length terminal studio degree, the Master of Fine Arts, the aforementioned subjects are more thoroughly covered through advanced coursework, research and self-directed creative production. Written theses usually supplement the creation of a master’s project, and the experience prepares MFA recipients to teach at the college level or attain leadership positions in the graphic design profession. A few universities in the United States offer PhD degrees in graphic design, with a distinct orientation towards formal research.

Our proposal for the use of self-authored graphic design as a strategy for integrative studies is based on a two-fold premise. On one hand, self-authored work can be of value for integrating different learning attitudes within the discipline of graphic design itself. This entails suggestions and examples of the ways in which those learning styles can be coordinated in the classroom setting, taking into consideration the field’s borderline position between contrasting realms of cognition (visual and verbal). On the other hand, we recognize the potential that a pedagogy based on self-authored graphic design projects has for establishing links with other disciplines across the curriculum. In this case, graphic design can assume the rhetorical role of facilitating the visualization of relationships between various bodies of knowledge.

The Notion of Self-authorship in Graphic Design top

Although graphic design is notoriously perceived as a service-oriented activity, where the designer’s personal vision usually takes a back seat in relation to the client’s brief, it is fair to say that 20th Century designers have always flirted with the possibility of higher agency over their work. The motivations behind this have varied throughout the decades and among different groups. An examination of current and past surveys of graphic design history (Meggs 1998; Hollis 1994; Müller-Brockmann, 1971) makes it apparent that the canon for the profession has frequently privileged works that support the representation of the designer as an independent thinker, often understating their effectiveness in relation to clients and audiences.

The identification of the profession’s roots in the early European avant-garde movements has further reinforced the image of the designer as a social critic who puts his or her creative talents at the service of industry with the overall betterment of society as a goal. By elevating the aesthetic standards in the universe of mass production, it was believed the designer could play a crucial role in the construction of a stronger cultural heritage. This sense of a higher purpose has been intimately connected with notions of self-authorship within the profession through two main attitudes. First are the numerous texts conceived by leading designers advocating not only verbally, but also oftentimes visually, their personal philosophies and moral standings. Second, in the avant-garde tradition of formal innovation, self-initiated graphic design projects such as magazines, experimental books, and visual essays, have been an important forum for the investigation and the expansion of the parameters for relationships between form and content . Here, the designer is not necessarily the generator of words per se. It is in the process of visual editing, the selecting and coordinating of text and images, based on one’s own personal agenda, that imparts the work with a level of design authorship. The voice of the designer is openly, or even loudly, articulated between the message and the reader.

The call for a higher degree of involvement by the designer with the content of what he or she designs has been strongly renewed during the closing of the century. In the past decade, many theoreticians have advocated the idea of design as a form of authorship (Burdick, 1993; McDonald, 1994). In many instances, the appeal to self-initiation has been closely linked with the urge for reevaluating the social responsibility and ethical code of the profession. The First Things First 2000 manifesto is exemplary of this position in the contemporary debate. Signed by some of the most respected designers in North America and Europe, and published simultaneously in many key design publications during 1999, the First Things First 2000 manifesto appealed to designers to reconsider their priorities, encouraging the pursuit of professional venues more in tune with the designer’s moral beliefs.

It is this tension between the necessity of keeping a nonpartisan utilitarian stance and the idealism and self-determination highly valued by the field’s intellectual elite, that provides the notion of self-authorship in graphic design some of its enticing but also problematic aspects. On a more theoretical level, the process of writing can be rethought in terms of the re-conceptualization of whole environments in which writing occurs (Burdick, 2000; Baker, 1994). In addition, the design process can be amplified to include possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration and entrepreneurship (Heller, 1998), bringing the notion of self-authorship beyond the subjective and into the public realm.

Conversely, this same tension poses the question of the feasibility of this position in relation to the realities of a market-driven economy. How much can a designer afford to select professional opportunities solely based on individual criteria of what she or he feels right or wrong, interesting or dull? (Poynor, 1998) This question is particularly relevant to educators faced with the task of re-directing curriculum towards a more “content-making” approach to design.

Another implication of this notion of graphic design self-authorship, with far reaching potential for educators is the prospect of placing the discipline past its vocational realm, allowing it to become a discursive practice to be learned and utilized in an integrative manner across various domains of knowledge.

Self-Authored Graphic Design and Students’ Learning Styles top

Due to its pivotal position in the topography of intellectual endeavor, between subjectivity and objectivity, and abstraction and concrete representation, the teaching of visual communication must address various cognitive modes and their related student learning styles. Because the practice of graphic design can involve both creativity and problem-solving, theory and application, intuition and rationality, and empathy and self-expression, recommendations for furthering a strategy for integrative studies must take these often contradictory qualities into account. Several educators have introduced theories that can serve as frameworks for the discussion of an integrated studies approach to graphic design, and to the partnership of graphic design with other fields in the pursuit of a more integrative pedagogy across other disciplines.

Using the Experiential Learning Model developed by educator David A. Kolb, a case is made for the value of self-authorship in graphic design education as a means of furthering integrative studies. Kolb’s model has two axes, each with a cognitive mode at its end: Concrete Experience is opposite Abstract Conceptualization, and Active Experimentation is opposite Reflective Observation. Graphic design education, to be fully integrative, must have activity within each of Kolb’s quadrants, addressing the cognitive needs of “divergers,” “assimilators,” “convergers,” and “accommodators.” (Kolb, 1976, 1984)

Plotting a preference along the axes, for example, students preferring Reflective Observation and Abstract Conceptualization, a distinct pedagogical region is identified, that of the “assimilator.” The resulting quadrant defines learning activities that are most conducive to learners with these characteristics, in this case: sequential thinking, factual, knowledge-based theories, continuity, assimilation, detailed data, etcetera. These learners benefit intellectually from formal lectures and demonstrations, doing independent research, gathering data and objective exams.

An example of a course that might satisfy these learners would be a history of visual communications class, with an assigned text, chronologically structured syllabus, tests about key dates, graphic artifacts, designers and imaging technologies, a formal research paper, and assignments like a project involving the cataloging of design examples based on a theme, or producing a timeline. Considering, however, that all students in a course do not have the same learning style, tactics for integrating diverse approaches to the course content must be implemented.

In the history of visual communications class example, “assimilator” learners, with more ability for linear organization, can be teamed with a person closer to the other extreme of the spectrum, perhaps more intuitively or spatially inclined, in the development of a classroom project. A research paper or presentation could consist not only of the information gathered but also the strategy conceived for the presentation of the materials. The choice of format, style of representation, medium, in other words the rhetorical devices utilized to communicate the subject to the audience would become an intrinsic part of the content. Perhaps the paper would be designed to reflect or critique the subject matter, engaging the students in a higher degree of self-authorship than traditional text-based research papers. This would accomplish several goals: the learning process becomes more experiential, diverse learning styles are recognized and encouraged, and a central tenet of visual communications history is acknowledged in that form carries meaning in a way that has evolved historically. Although our use of Kolb’s student learning styles model seems to divide learners, it is with the goal of putting them back together in an integrated learning environment, thereby gearing learning experiences appropriately. As art educator Michael Parsons states, “For the integration of knowledge, when it occurs, lies only proximately in the curriculum plans of teachers and ultimately in the understandings of students.” (Parsons, 1998) This understanding is enhanced by identifying students’ learning styles, especially in relation to the subject being learned. As self-authored graphic design entails both discursive and intuitive ways of working and learning, this model is useful for discussing an integrative learning environment.

Theories of Integrated Curricula and their Relationship to Graphic Design top

Some theories advanced by art educators regarding curricular integration are useful in positioning self-authored graphic design as a key component in interdisciplinary thinking. Antidotal to the knowledge fragmentation endemic to higher education, the use of self-authored graphic design as a strategy for integrative studies can further relationships between fields. Don Krug and Nurit Cohen-Evron outline four art education curricular practices in their article “Curriculum Integration Positions and Practices in Art Education” that can also be applied to self-authored graphic design. They write how art can be used as a resource for other disciplines, as an organizing center for other disciplines, as a means of interpreting subjects, ideas and themes, and in helping to understand life-centered issues. (Krug and Cohen-Evron, 2000)

Similarly, graphic design can be used as a resource for other disciplines (for example, an artifact like the Book of Kells, ca. 800 AD, can inform such subjects as history, linguistics, religious studies and art); as an organizing center for other disciplines (creating curricular content based on graphic design’s role as a hub to different spokes of knowledge; an example would be combining writing with a political issue, in the context of a graphic design project that respects the integrity of English and political science within a collaborative context); as a means of interpreting subjects, ideas and themes (consideration of multiple points of view, and the role of representation in comprehensive inquiry); and in helping to understand life-centered issues (from our experience, students regularly address topics like family relationships, religious beliefs, gender, sub-culture and other social and personal issues through self-authored graphic design). A strong benefit to these approaches is the de-emphasizing of student knowledge accumulation and the creation of a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing environment.

The symbol systems’ model of the arts, in which cognition relies on understanding each artform’s discrete set of symbols, has been viewed as fitting poorly with integrated learning, because when viewers move from one symbol system to another, coherence breaks down and that “unnecessarily transforms a dimension of difference into a principle of separation.” (Parsons, 1998) Because symbol systems rely on sets of learned symbols tied to the medium of expression (cartography, arithmetic, poetry and so on), with the assupmtion of each system requiring different mental processes, this approach cannot effectively model media that are multi-, inter- or transdisciplanary. Graphic design has always negotiated the symbolic systems of written and pictorial languages, and self-authored graphic design in particular synthesizes form and content beyond the quotidian landscape of direct-mail catalogs, cereal boxes and billboards.

The view of graphic design as a system of signs advanced by some design semiotics theorists (Ockerse and van Dijk, 1979) offers a model based on logical relationships that define a systemic structure. The semiotic approach explains the roles of the sign, the signified and the conditions for signifying, but the reliance on logic as the way of thinking and working within semiotic theory and practice limits the possibilities of self-authorship, and therefore its potential in integrated curricula.

Deconstruction and post-structuralism’s influence on graphic design (Aldersey-Williams 1990, Lupton and Miller, 1996) has opened avenues to integration by undermining the fixed meaning of visual communication through a critical engagement of content and form. As comparable to art, the interpretation of deconstructed graphic design that is “...imprecise, multi-layered, volatile, always in process of meaning...” (Parsons, 1998) is the essence of why it can pose “greatly increased possibilities of meaning.” (Parsons, 1998).

Technological Influences top

Encouraged by the recent changes in communication technologies, and a consequent renewed interest by the humanities in the material conditions in which visible language exists, designers have opened a discourse with such disciplines as psychology, sociology, marketing, art, literature, cultural studies, history, materials science and engineering. Bridging liberal studies and the communications media, self-authored graphic design is ideally suited to facilitate a dialog between disciplines, and seize opportunities presented by new technologies.

One way that electronic technology can influence the teaching of liberal arts, leaning towards a more diverse classroom approach, is exposed in Richard Lanham’s article “The Extraordinary Convergence.” It is particularly relevant to design education because it advocates a re-incorporation of Rhetoric into the liberal arts curriculum. According to Lanham, this post-modern version of Rhetoric is now personified by the electronic environment and its intrinsic capability for organizing content in a variety of modes. This means incorporating text, images, and sound, as well as allowing for varying degrees of interactivity, bringing drama and play back into the realm of knowledge. As he puts it, in reference to Beatrice Warde’s essay (1956) which advocated for a classical typography through which ideas are clearly communicated, “The electronic word smashes the crystal goblet,” thus allowing for alternative ways of presenting content catering to different learning abilities. The student may not only read the text but also literally pull it apart, manipulate the type, experiment with different visual and verbal hierarchies, change scales, create unexpected juxtapositions, establish contrasts, etcetera. In short, reconfigure a narrative that best suits his or her understanding of the material. (Lanham, 1990)

Recommendations for Integration top

Through research on the work of practitioners and educators, gleaned in part from the national exhibition Designer as Author: Voices and Visions curated jointed by the authors in 1996, we have identified four major categories in which self-authorship in graphic design can take place: writing, editing, collaboration and interaction. All rely on the assumption of designer initiation to establish content, fostering an atmosphere of personal engagement. Initiation implies an active role in the generation of message content, a problem-seeking approach in which opportunities are identified, rather than the typical reactionary model of instructor-imposed, client-biased problem-solving scenarios. Students’ personal, social, political and cultural interests are thereby acknowledged and used to engage them in an experiential learning environment. Social activism, media commentary, literary and artistic criticism, personal expression, personal therapy, and phenomena documentation – all become welcome topics that students can initiate and synthesize into a rich integrated studies pedagogy.

The first instance, writing, can be closely related with conventional models of literary authorship, where the originator of the project is responsible for generating its verbal content. More often than not, the verbal content, based on a specific topic, tends to be established beforehand and the design process follows along. Here, the process of writing finds a close parallel to the process of designing in that both require research, creative and critical thinking on the subject, and the execution of several drafts that are progressively refined as the conceptual focus evolves. Precedents include the professional and critical design press, alternative “zines” and other self-published ventures, and the work of concrete poets.

Designers can use the written word to advance their own interests on a subject as well as to record observations or comment upon an issue. In a studio environment, an effective manner for encouraging content development is to ask students to draw from personal experience. The motto “you write best what you know more,” frequently advocated in beginners’ writing classes, finds its equivalent here in design. This also conforms to many universities’ Writing Across the Curriculum initiatives, whereby all disciplines are encouraged to integrate writing into their courses. In an interdisciplinary context, the process of organizing verbal thoughts on a certain subject can be paired with that of giving form to these thoughts. This could entail, for example, an integrated situation where a topic examined by a student in a humanities or science class can be brought into the studio where he or she will struggle with finding the best way of presenting that information. Considerations in regards to specific audiences and diverse levels of reading can be addressed, allowing for a possible clarification or amplification of the original content. In turn, those results can be taken back to the humanities or science class and re-evaluated in terms of accuracy, effectiveness of reasoning or emotive quality.

Alternatively, the role of the designer can be that of editor, supplementing content rather than generating it. In this case, the work can take the form of a compilation of ideas. Here, the designer’s involvement with the content is defined by their ability to assemble visual and verbal materials from diverse sources in an organized and expressive manner, thus creating a coherent narrative or point of view. This is the formula employed in many contemporary publications, where form can, in the most extreme cases, become the content itself. In other occasions, this can also result in a symbiosis of content and form where word and image assume the same level of importance.

In an educational setting, the multivocality inherent to this approach can be extremely useful in helping students to draw connections between apparently disparate subjects. By encouraging the student to juxtapose and synthesize information, while paying attention to the symbolic aspects involved in visual representation, fresh insights can be achieved and a renewed interest on learning, based on the re-interpretation and re-articulation of traditional content, can be fostered. Edward Tufte’s influential research into the visual display of quantitative information (1990) and visual narrative (1997) can serve as a guide to incorporating these principles into the editing of subjects as diverse as history, economics and chemistry.

The third category of self-authorship in graphic design involves collaboration with other professionals (or majors) from diverse disciplines. In this case, the work becomes the product of a collective body of authors and initiators. French designer Pierre Bernard, co-founder of the avant-garde collective Grapus, states, “Co-authorship seems to me the crucial issue from a deontological point of view. This connivance is a necessity. It means the client has to share the aesthetic options of the graphic designer as the designer must share his client’s ideological options. It is out of this precarious balance that a cultural action can come into being.” (Core of Understanding conference brochure, 1989)

In artistic and literary spheres, one of the quintessential venues for authorial collaboration is the exquisite corpse format where artists or writers contribute their own particular view to a larger work that transcends the mere sum of the parts. Another instance of collaboration can take place when individuals from varied backgrounds come together around a common cause, such as in the establishment of cooperatives or activist organizations. Students from different areas would be encouraged to work together, each bringing a personal view based on their individual learning experiences. Opportunities already exist in most universities with the publication of print and online student newspapers, organization websites and literary, academic and arts journals.

As part of an integrative pedagogy, the potential for collaboration between students of different disciplines can be explored through the development of courses that could revolve around topics or specific issues, including entrepreneurial ventures. In a single class, diverse learning styles can be coordinated, enriching and complementing each other through the development of group assignments that tackle both the collection of data and its materialization through a visual format, as proposed in the earlier history of visual communications class example. Another applied example could be an environmentally sustainable entrepreneurial venture, in which concerns about waste, consumption and health are maintained and communicated while creating an economically viable product or service. Whether this learning experience takes place in a civil engineering class, a marketing class, or in a design class, (or in a hybrid of all three) the integration of disciplines and the recognition of student learning styles would be furthered.

In the fourth category, the designer acts as a catalyst of ideas and the process of authorship is shaped by the interaction between the work and the audience, creating a greater continuum of communication. This is a strategy particularly well suited to the electronic environment, where information can be arranged through complex networks of links allowing for the same content to be experienced in multiple ways, or for an almost infinite infoscape to be experienced uniquely. The reader becomes a co-author as decisions are made about which paths to follow, with lateral hierarchies supplementing linear ones, and with intended and random associations furthering the experiential process.

Steven Johnson and Janet Murray have written extensively about technology’s potential with literal and visual language, and the way the electronic environment mediates communication. Johnson states in Interface Culture, “The [hypertext] link is the first significant form of punctuation to emerge in centuries, but it is only a hint of things to come.” He continues, implying the magic of digital interaction between both designer/author and audience/participant, “...the novelists and site designers and digital artists are busy conjuring up the new grammar and syntax of linking.” (Johnson, 1997)

In Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray’s definition of digital environments as, “procedural, participatory, spatial and encyclopedic” seems to reinforce the four cognitive modes identified earlier in Kolb’s model. Her “multiform story” examples, (open-ended, time-independent, morphing, etcetera) show how the integration of these qualities puts the reader/viewer in the center of the interaction, immersed simultaneously in the reading and the creating. (Murray, 1997)

Murray also makes a compelling argument for an integrative studies approach in an article published in The Chronicle for Higher Education on educating future interactive-media designers. “What we need is a conceptual framework, a shared design vocabulary that draws on various fields and enables interactive-media professionals to talk with one another across specialties.” She continues, “The healthiest programs will be those that draw equally on the empirical bent of engineers and social scientists and on the cultural knowledge and expressiveness of humanists and artists.” (1999)

Interaction can also be achieved when designers propose projects where the audience is invited to complete the work. In this case, the designer’s role is to create a context in which some form of interaction or performance can take place. Although possible scenarios can be devised by the designer/author, ultimately the user is given increased control over the outcome within the provided framework. Class projects here can be based on the construction of interfaces or environments inviting responses from various audiences. This can take the form of websites, immersive interactive environments, and exhibitions where a certain subject is exposed and reaction is encouraged. Here, students are asked to address spatial, hierarchical and typographical concerns that are central to the design process.

Conclusion top

In a world where knowledge is increasingly dependent on the dynamic relationship between words and images, visual literacy will continue to become a prerequisite for successful learning. The ability to navigate and synthesize ideas along these complementary systems of representation can be an important asset in a truly integrative education. The traditional assumption that only a few people of innate talent are fit to learn how to visually communicate is being continuously challenged as technologies of imaging and image-editing merge with writing technologies and become more accessible to a diversified public. Once rare, courses with names like Visual Thinking are being offered with greater frequency, outside of art departments and inside of engineering and business schools. Concerns of visual organization previously restricted to graphic designers or visual experts are now part of a lay person’s vocabulary.

The recent focus on self-authorship within graphic design seems to be in tune with the movement towards a broader interpretation of the discipline. Such an interpretation would take into account the value of its concepts, tools, and methods for fostering communication and active learning, as opposed to a narrow vocational training limited to future professionals in the field. Integrative activities such as team teaching, project-based and cooperative learning, and thematic instruction, are particularly compatible to the modalities of graphic design self-authorship presented here.

The main task resides in propitiating the necessary conditions for furthering the dialog between design and other areas of knowledge. While several design educators today encourage students to bring content from other disciplines to inform their studio practice, there is still much to be done in promoting an open flow across disciplinary boundaries. Recent attempts at exploring the overlap of design disciplines with the social sciences is evidenced in a current interdisciplinary conference – “Design and the social sciences,” which took place last October, in Alberta, Canada. Several graduate programs also provide alternative pathways that allow design majors to interface with other disciplines, and both the University of Minnesota and Western Washington University offer design minors for students from other disciplines across campus. By pursuing common ground among the many areas that comprise a university liberal studies core, incorporation of this trend into the undergraduate curriculum would represent a beneficial step towards development of a truly integrative educational experience.